Big Oil and Tax Breaks

To hear the president and Democrats talk, you'd think that Big Oil was sucking the Treasury dry with huge subsidies. Almost a year ago I wrote about the federal government's "subsidies" to Big Oil. I said then, "They are all tax 'breaks'... about $4.3 billion per year -- about 0.2% of this year's deficit and enough to fund about 10 hours of current US government spending."
I was wrong. The tax breaks for all fossil fuels was not $4.3B in 2011. It was only $2.5B -- about 0.19% of that year's deficit, and enough to fund only six hours of U.S. government spending. The source for such heresy? The Congressional Budget Office.
Just to be clear, that $2.5B was not just for Big Oil, but also for Big Coal and Big Gas: all fossil fuels. Here, more exactly, are those subsidies, in the CBO's words.
"Expensing of exploration and development costs for oil and natural gas." ($0.8B)
"Option to expense 50% of qualified property used to refine liquid fuels."...(Read Full Article)